HEARING OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER FOR TRADE AND PANEL DISCUSSION. 9/29, 8:00-10:30am. Sponsor: Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS, Johns Hopkins. Speakers; Antoine Ripoll, head of the European Parliament Liaison Office with the U.S. Congress; Dan Hamilton, executive director of the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations; Marjorie Chorlins, vice president for European affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Hendrike Kuehl, head of the Brussels office for the Trans-Atlantic Business Council; and Geoff Antell, member of the trade counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee.

FEDERATED DEFENSE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. 9/29, 9:00am-1:00pm. Sponsors: International Security Program, CSIS; Middle East Program, CSIS; Federated Defense Project, CSIS. Speakers: Dr. Nora Bensahel, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Responsible Defense Program, Center for a New American Security; Dr. Frederic Wehrey, Senior Associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Dr. Andrew Parasiliti, Director of the Center for Global Research and Security, RAND Corporation; Tom Vecchiolla, President of Raytheon International; Dr. Matthew Spence, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy; Christian Brose, National Security Advisor to Senator John McCain; Dr. Philip Gordon, Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region.

AMERICA AND THE CHALLENGES OF A TURBULENT MIDDLE EAST: LOOKING BACKWARD, LOOKING FORWARD. 9/29,
9:00am-1:30pm. Sponsor: Washington Institute for Near East
Policy (WINEP). Speakers: Israeli Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein;
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro; and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel
William Brown participate in a discussion on "The Evolution of U.S.-Israel
Relations in the Sam Lewis Era" 10:30 a.m.: Jessica Mathews,
president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; former Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute;
and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dennis Ross, fellow at WINEP, participate
in a discussion on "A Moving Target: The Art and Science of Middle East
Policy Planning"12:30 p.m.: Deputy Secretary of State William
Burns delivers keynote.

THE EVOLVING RISKSOF FRAGILE STATES AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM. 9/ 29, 2:00-3:30pm. Sponsor: Brookings Institution. Speakers: Jean-Marie Guehenno,
president of the International Crisis Group; Sarah Cliffe, special adviser at
the World Bank Group and former assistant secretary-general of the United
Nations; and Bruce Jones, senior fellow and deputy director of foreign policy
at Brookings.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

ADDRESSING CORRUPTION IN GLOBAL TRADE. 9/22, 8:30-10:00am. Sponsor: US and International Anti-Corruption Law Program, American University Washington College of Law. Speakers: (Keynote) Pascal Lamy, Former WTO Director General; Alan Larson, Chairman, Transparency International USA; Tim Reif, General Counsel, Office of the US Trade Representative; Moderator: Nancy Boswell, Director, US & International Anti-Corruption Law Program.

100 YEARS OF WARFIGHTER TECHNOLOGY. 9/22, 5:00-8:00pm. Sponsor: Task Force on American Innovation. Speakers: Patricia Falcone, associate director for national security and international affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Thomas Williams, director of operations and CEO at United States Marine Corps Historical Company.

In a Sept. 5 Twitter post, university instructor Akiko Orita pointed out that four of the five women appointed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to his new Cabinet do not use their legal names. Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi, state minister in charge of abduction issues Eriko Yamatani, state minister in charge of female empowerment Haruko Arimura and Justice Minister Midori Matsushima all go by the names they were born with rather than their husbands’. According to the Civil Code, married couples must use the same name, and while a man can take his wife’s name, that happens only 2 percent of the time, and usually because the wife’s family doesn’t have a male heir to carry on the name. The husband of the fifth new female Cabinet member, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yuko Obuchi, took her surname because she belongs to a political dynasty and is, thus, expected to take over the family business.

In its interview with Matsushima, Tokyo Shimbun asked if she would do anything in her capacity as law minister to allow married couples to have separate names, a common situation in other developed countries but one the Liberal Democratic Party opposes because it thinks it undermines family unity. Without mentioning her own situation, she said the matter “is related to the core being of a family,” and thus “it is difficult to make a decision right away.” Actually, politicians have been discussing separate names since the early 1990s and legislation was once drafted to change the Civil Code and make it legal, but nothing was done. “Right away” in this case seems to mean “forever.”

[APP: With the exception of Obuchi, all the female Cabinet members belong to a number of parliamentary leagues, such as Nippon Kaigi that advocate traditional gender roles and for women to continue to adopt their husband's name.]

Is Matsushima a hypocrite? Maybe, but she is adhering to the party line, which is more important. When Abe announced the Cabinet on Sept. 3 at a news conference, he said that all the new members possessed “abilities adequate” to their respective posts, and that he wants the female ministers to create a “new wind” of change that will force society to look at the world from a woman’s perspective. But in media interviews these women have offered no original opinions or policy proposals that differ in any way from Abe’s stated positions, unless you count Arimura’s statement that she would like to ban abortion, which some will interpret as not looking at society from a woman’s perspective.

[APP: Arimura is a member of the Caucus to Promote Parental Education [親学推進議員連盟Oya gaku suishin giin renmei ], aka
Home Education Support Caucus. Prime Minister ABE Shinzo is the group’s chairman. Parliamentary group tied to the Association for Parental Education established by TAKAHASHI Shiro. Takahashi, a professor at Meisei University
and former deputy chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform,
promotes the concept of “Oya Gaku” (Parenting Studies). It asserts that parents need to be educated about correct childrearing.
“Correct” in this context means emulating pre-war education. Autism and learning disabilities are considered the product of lack parenting.]

This particular Cabinet reshuffle is no more cynically motivated than any other in the LDP’s history. Ministers are almost never chosen for their expertise in a given field but rather because of their political affiliations and time in office. All are eventually beholden to the bureaucrats who make those ministries their life’s work, regardless of whether or not that work aligns with the aims of the ruling party. However, choosing these particular women does seem cynical. As the weekly Aera points out, there are about 60 lawmakers in the LDP who are “waiting their turn” for ministry positions and who were disappointed they didn’t get one this time. Since Abe wanted to keep certain people in the Cabinet for strategic reasons — for instance, Shigeru Ishiba is considered a threat to Abe’s premiership so he had to be kept close — there was a limited number of openings, and he needed to match if not surpass the previous record for female ministers in order to lend credibility to his pledge to make Japanese women “shine.”

So the media was expecting a female posse, just not necessarily this posse. The biggest surprise was the absence of Seiko Noda, one of the most experienced female lawmakers in the LDP, though Noda and Abe have reportedly been on cool terms ever since she opposed the LDP’s bill to privatize the post office when Abe was chief Cabinet secretary.

In an interview with Aera, Noda toed the party line and did not betray disappointment with being passed over. She praised the choices as “courageous” and said she thought they showed a “good mixture of viewpoints.” But her most revealing comment had to do with her pal Obuchi, the youngest of the female ministers. Saying that Obuchi was nervous about her new job, Noda asked the press “to admire her, because she knows her limitations.” Aera paraphrases an unnamed trade ministry official as saying that Obuchi, who reportedly refused a Cabinet post when Abe became prime minister in 2012, was selected because having a young, relatively inexperienced woman — and not just a woman, but a mother — as trade minister makes it more difficult for people to criticize the ministry when it approves the resumption of nuclear power plants.

Matsushima was even more of a surprise, having been elected only four times. A former Asahi Shimbun reporter who covered Yoshiro Mori when he was prime minister, she went into politics at Mori’s encouragement. The buzz is that Abe wanted former Olympic speed skater Seiko Hashimoto to take the justice portfolio but Hashimoto was recently involved in a tabloid scandal and so Matsushima was “pushed up.”

The remaining three women, as well as new LDP policy chief Tomomi Inada, have been criticized for their rightist leanings, and there seems to be concern within the party that they could, as one critic told Aera, “step on a mine” by saying something stupid about China or South Korea. The embarrassing photos of Inada and Takaichi with that Japanese Nazi are already old news and mean little to the domestic press. More potentially problematic in light of their PR value to the Abe administration is their pronouncements on nominally female issues. Takaichi is against quotas for women in management and politics, while Yamatani opposes sex education in schools. Arimura pegs her “patriotism” to “everyday values,” which include wives “supporting” breadwinner husbands.

None of this is surprising given Abe’s record, but it’s discouraging when the executive director of U.N. Women praises the selectionsand surveys show female support rates for the administration roseafter the new Cabinet announcement. You’d think everybody would be wise to the game by now.

AMERICAN ISOLATIONISM: IS IT A MYTH OR REALITY? 9/15, 12:30-1:45pm. Sponsor: Wilson Center. Speakers: Jill Dougherty, Public Policy Scholar, Former CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent; Ivo Daalder, President, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, former US Permanent Representative to NATO; Jane Harman, Director, President and CEO, Wilson Center, Bruce Jentleson, Global Fellow, Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University.

The above is 2009 interview with Mr. Sasakawa Yohei who is reportedly a major benefactor to Prime Minister Abe. Yohei's father Ryohei was close to Abe's grandfather Kishi Nobusuke.Yohei Sasakawa:Indeed, it's very important, as you say, to educate the people. When we talk about education, we need political leaders, scholars, teachers and academicians to be involved, to really be aware of the seriousness of the situation we have on our hands. For each of the people in our lives, we need to be able to convey the correct information about the seriousness of the problem, to establish some sort of policy mechanism that we can spread to different countries.Tuesday, August 19, 2014

AM
12:00 At official residence (no visitors)
08:00 At official residence (no morning visitors)
11:44 Depart from official residence
11:54 Arrive at Komyo-ji Temple in Toranomon, Tokyo. Attend memorial service for the late Ushio Haruko, wife of Chairman of Ushio electronics company Ushio Jiro

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Reexamining "Myths" About Japan's Collective Self-Defense Change -- What critics (and the Japanese public) do understand about Japan's constitutional reinterpretation

By APP Member Bryce Wakefield, assistant professor of Japanese politics and international relations at Leiden University and Craig Martin, associate professor of law at Washburn University. The views expressed in this article are their own.First posted on Japan Focus,September 8, 2014

In a recent article in the Diplomat, Michael Green and Jeffrey Hornung claimed that critics of the Abe government’s “reinterpretation” of Japan’s constitution, to end the ban on the use of force for the purposes of collective self-defense, were “basing their opposition on myths about the change.” This allegation that resistance to the “reinterpretation” of Article 9 is based on nothing but “myths” is increasingly heard, and so it is worth examining their arguments, and the so-called myths that they purport to dismiss.

Green and Hornung argued that the changes to be made through the “reinterpretation” were actually slight and that the immediate implications were far less problematic than alleged. There is a grain of truth to this as it relates to imminent strategic consequences, but it also misses the essential point. Yes, at least in the short term, changes to the roles and the missions of the nation’s Self Defense Forces resulting from “reinterpretation” will probably be modest; and yes, the changes will not likely lead to militarism, regional adventurism, or various other scenarios that the article examines and dismisses. But this focus on the intended policy shifts misses the far more significant issues raised both by the unconstitutional nature of the move and the possible longer-term and profound systemic ramifications of the “reinterpretation.”

It is precisely because the immediate strategic implications of the Abe Cabinet’s announcement will probably be relatively modest that the implications for constitutional practice in Japan should be the focus of the debate. Perhaps the changing strategic environment in Asia will require Japan to consider relaxing some of the constraints imposed by Article 9. However, so fundamental a change to the nation’s constitution should only come after broad debate and pursuant to formal amendment procedures as provided for in the constitution. As explained below, the so-called “reinterpretation” process has in fact weakened constitutionalism, the rule of law, and fundamental principles of democracy in Japan, an argument that Green and Hornung, and many other defenders of the “reinterpretation”, never seriously address. In short, the harm is to the Constitution, and so focus on strategy is no answer.

Let us re-examine some of the “myths” that Green and Hornung so quickly dismiss.

“Abe is gutting the spirit of Japan’s peace constitution”

Green and Hornung maintain that Abe’s announcement is not undermining the spirit of Article 9, because in reality it is not really changing the official interpretation at all. They claim that the Cabinet Legislation Bureau (CLB), a department within the Ministry of Justice that gives advice to the government and the Diet on the constitutionality of laws, has always acknowledged that Japan has a right to collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, but that “collective self-defense was deemed inappropriate because it did not meet the CLB’s definition of ‘minimal’ defense” necessary for the defense of Japan. What has changed now, according to Green and Hornung, is that because of the evolution of the strategic environment, collective self-defense should be understood as being within the “minimal necessary use of force” required for the defense of Japan itself. Thus, they argue, the shift in the “reinterpretation” is not inconsistent with the original CLB position, and is thus not really a new interpretation of Article 9.

This is both misleading in what it does argue, and entirely disregards more fundamental arguments about the harm that will be caused to Article 9. To begin with problems inherent in the narrow point they make, it is simply incorrect to say that the recognition of a right to collective self-defense would not constitute a fundamental change in the meaning of Article 9. Their claim appears to confuse the distinction between individual self-defense (ISD) and collective self-defense (CSD), as those concepts are understood in international law. ISD, of course, is the use of force in defense of the state in response to an armed attack on that state. ISD has been understood to be permitted by Article 9 since Japan reemerged as a sovereign state in the early 1950s, following the postwar Allied Occupation. CSD, on the other hand, is the use of force by one state in defense ofsome other state in response to an armed attack on that other state, for example the American use of force against Iraq in defense of Kuwait in 1991. Green and Hornung’s argument that Japan may use force to assist other countries in order to better ensure Japan’s own security conflates these two concepts. The use of force by Japan in a true exercise of CSD would, by definition, not be for the defense of Japan, even if at some stage in the future such an action might improve Japan’s strategic or defensive situation.

It is true that the CLB has acknowledged that Japan, like all nations, has the right to use force in the exercise of CSD as a matter of international law; but it has also stated, on more than one occasion, that it is prohibited as a matter of constitutional law. According to the bureau’s earlier statements, Article 9, which renounces war and prohibits the use of force as a means of settling international disputes, makes the exercise of that international law right “impermissible under the constitution.” All that is permitted is the minimum force necessary to defend against an armed attack on Japan itself – an exercise of ISD. By eliminating the requirement that there be a direct attack on Japan as a pre-condition for Japan to lawfully use force in self-defense, the Abe Cabinet has therefore made a clear break with, and is in direct opposition to, prior and consistent understandings of the constitution.

A related argument that is often heard is that there has been a pattern of “reinterpretations” by government in the past with respect to defense posture and capabilities, and thus this “reinterpretation” is not unusual. As The Economist puts it, this was a “usual if rather shabby” process of constitutional change. But this too is entirely inaccurate. It is true that there have been incremental changes to Japan’s defense posture, but there has been a consistent understanding that such decisions on force adjustments fall within constitutional boundaries, precisely because they take into account the restraint embodied by the long standing interpretation that force may be used only for the direct defense of Japan. The government has never suggested that these defense posture adjustments constituted a “reinterpretation”, nor have they ever been understood to “reinterpret” Article 9. Government “reinterpretation” has simply never been recognized as a legitimate method of circumventing the legitimate amendment procedures and revising the longstanding interpretations of the constitution.

The difference in nature between past defense posture adjustments and the current “reinterpretation” becomes clearer upon a closer examination of those past shifts. The government has sought to reduce the restrictions on the deployment and use the military since the 1980s, and particularly after the Gulf War. However, many of these restrictions (such as the post-war ban on overseas dispatch of the SDF, rescinded in 1993) were established between the 1950s and the mid-1970s as political measures designed to deflate protest on the political left and to reassure the Japanese public sceptical after the war about military solutions to international problems. At the time they were conceived and often afterwards, the government was careful to note that such restrictions were not required by the constitution. Thus, the later dismantling of those restrictions, such as legislation eliminating the ban on overseas deployment of the SDF for involvement in UN peace keeping operations (PKO), did not constitute a “reinterpretation” of Article 9. The deployment of the SDF for PKO activity does not constitute a use of force under international law and did not implicate Article 9. Similarly, relatively recent overseas missions, such as anti-piracy operations, while they appear to political analysts as a type of CSD, in fact constitute no such thing, because they do not involve the use of force—a concept in international law that relates to relations between state actors. On the other hand, the deployment of the SDF to assist in the belligerent occupation of Iraq in 2003 may indeed have constituted a use of force, as the Nagoya High Court so held in a judgment in 2008—but that would be a violation of the Constitution, not an example of its “reinterpretation”.

Abe’s attempt at “reinterpretation”, shabby though it may be, is therefore far from usual. This point is often lost on historians, political scientists, and analysts interested in Japan’s defense policy, who focus less on the legal ramifications of change and more on the strategic or political implications. It is lost as well on some peace advocates and left-wing politicians in Japan, who have never fully accepted the 1954 interpretation that recognized the right to exercise ISD, or the legitimacy of an SDF as constituting the minimal “war potential” necessary for the defense of Japan. Seen from their perspectives, the current “reinterpretation” may seem to be simply a continuation of an incrementally more assertive (and possibly unconstitutional) defense policy. But from the perspective of the government’s own position on Article 9, this “reinterpretation” is unprecedented.

Green and Hornung also suggest that the current interpretation and understanding of Article 9 was itself based on a “reinterpretation”, and that, therefore, “if Abe’s decision was reached undemocratically, then the earlier interpretation being upheld by his opponents must be considered undemocratic as well.” But this too is misplaced. The CLB played an important role in developing the initial interpretation, it is true – but that was at the very outset of establishing the interpretation of a new constitution. While there was robust debate in the Diet as to what precisely Article 9 meant and exactly what it restricted, the government issued no clear and consistent opinion until the interpretation in 1954. That interpretation, as it related to the very limited right to use force for purposes of ISD, was reinforced by the Supreme Court, the branch of government with the constitutionally mandated authority to interpret the constitution, in the famousSunagawa case in 1959. It has been further reinforced by more than six decades of consistent Diet testimony and policy precedent. Indeed, in 1991 there was enormous pressure upon Japan to contribute forces to the coalition engaging in collective self-defense in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and there was an acute sense that failure to do so would jeopardize Japan’s alliance with the U.S., but the CLB advised the Kaifu government that Article 9 prohibited any such move. The government, in compliance with that understanding of Article 9, therefore refused to participate in the military operations, and the no-use of force provision of Article 9 successfully operated to constrain government policy. There is no basis for arguing that the manner in which the original interpretation was established, shortly after the Constitution was promulgated and prior to any judicial consideration or serious policy development, is in any way similar to the “reinterpretation” by Cabinet fiat now at issue after six decades of entrenchment. It cannot be considered a serious comparison.

These rather technical arguments about the past CLB interpretation in any event miss the other ways in which the “reinterpretation” will potentially gut Article 9. In addition to now declaring that Article 9 no longer prohibits the use of force for purposes of CSD, key actors in the government and an “Advisory Panel” that Abe set up to “reconstruct the legal basis” for national security have suggested that Japan can and should use force in collective security operations authorized by the U.N. Security Council under Article 42 of the Charter. If that were to become the accepted interpretation of Article 9, which, it should be recalled, states in part that Japan “forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation, and the threat or use of force for the settling of international disputes”, then Article 9 will in fact no longer renounce any sovereign right relating to the making of war and the use of force, despite its explicit language to the contrary. The U.N. Charter prohibits the use of force by states, with three exceptions – or to put it another way, three sovereign rights – the use of force for ISD and CSD, and collective security measures authorized by the Security Council. Under the “reinterpretation” recommended by the panel, Japan would be permitted to engage in all three, and so Article 9 would not limit Japan from doing anything that international law does not already forbid. It is difficult to see that such a move would not be gutting the pacifist spirit and intent of Article 9.

The next “myth” that Green, Hornung and others take aim at is the so-called slippery slope argument. Abe’s defenders argue that there is no such slippery slope, and this move cannot be taken as leading to further erosion of Article 9. In emphasizing the modesty of Abe’s “reinterpretation”, they point to the fact that the prime minister has stated that the constitution would continue to prohibit collective security measures authorized by the UN Security Council. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that this limitation is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the text of the Cabinet Resolution, the larger point is that the process of reinterpretation destroys any sense of durable and meaningful constitutional constraints, which undermines not only Article 9, but indeed the entire constitutional structure. So the Cabinet Resolution places various conditions upon the exercise of CSD, upon which defenders of the process place great store. But given the precedent this process has established, these limits too are only binding, if one can call it that, until the next Cabinet resolution. These are not constitutional provisions or principles, but mere whims of the Cabinet of the day. If they can supplant a constitutional provision today, a much broader and more insidious Cabinet Resolution may do so tomorrow. Thus, the prospect of the process comprising the beginning of a slippery slope cannot be dismissed as mere myth. This process of “reinterpretation” by cabinet fiat makes a mockery of the entire notion of a constitution comprising the highest law of the land, which serves to bind future generations to consistent principles and values, and imposes meaningful constraints on the exercise of government power.

The slippery slope argument is further strengthened by considerations of motive. It is hard to dismiss the violence that the Cabinet Resolution does to the constitution as “merely” the product of a government with an overzealous defense agenda prioritizing narrow policy goals over respect for constitutional provisions. Rather, undermining the constitution appears to be a central goal of key actors within the government. Abe has actually suggested that the idea that constitutions are intended to limit government power is “old-fashioned.” In the recent negotiations with Komeito over the exact language of the Cabinet Resolution, many members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) wanted the resolution to have fewer limitations. Meanwhile, LDP Secretary General Ishiba Shigeru has noted that the government should “start with a limited scope” in its interpretation of CSD so that it can “widen later.” The Abe Cabinet’s “reinterpretation” leaves precisely that possibility intact by at once eliminating the constitutional prohibition on CSD, but also adding ambiguous limitations and conditions, so that any decision on expanding the roles of the SDF will be merely political, not legal. Moreover, it has established the precedent that any provision of the constitution—not just Article 9—is subject to arbitrary government “reinterpretation.” Scholars have also argued that this is just one step towards more wholesale amendment down the road—that by twisting the meaning of the constitution, Abe is trying to ensure that it will be easier to claim later that the actual language of its provisions no longer reflect reality, and must therefore be formally amended. Whether or not that is the case, with reinterpretation acting as a de factomechanism for change, arguments about actual amendment would be moot.

“The decision was made undemocratically without transparency”

In arguing that it is merely a “myth” that the “reinterpretation” was made undemocratically and without transparency, Green and Hornung emphasize that cabinet discussions on CSD, “were reported upon daily by Japan’s media, enabling voters to be fully aware of the discussions.” But that does not address whether the prime minister or the cabinet properly subjected the process to transparent and democratic scrutiny. Yes, there was media attention. Indeed, few issues rile the media in Japan like government action on security policy. But on its own, media coverage of government statements on CSD does not imply transparency or adherence to democratic principles.

In fact, in his push for “reinterpretation”, Abe has pointedly attempted to circumvent any real public or political debate (transparency), and even more seriously, circumvented the constitutionally mandated amendment procedure, which in and of itself constitutes a violation of fundamental principles of constitutionalism and the rule of law (democratic principles). This begins with the circumvention of the amendment procedure. Article 96 of the Constitution provides for precisely how the Constitution is to be amended. Amendments must be initiated by the Diet, approved by two thirds of each house of the Diet, and then approved by a majority of votes in a general referendum. Comparative research has shown that Japan’s amendment process is less difficult than that of a number of other constitutional democracies, including the U.S. Indeed, the LDP did in fact begin laying the foundation for formal amendment in the years following 9/11. But when Abe’s attempts to mobilize support for amending Article 9 ran into stiff headwinds, he attacked the amendment procedure itself, seeking to make the constitutional amendment process little more difficult for the Diet than the revision of common statutes. When that effort failed, due in large measure to the backlash from lawyers and constitutional scholars, he chose to circumvent the amendment procedure altogether, moving to “reinterpret” Article 9. To dress up this wholly illegitimate process, he resurrected his extra-constitutional “Advisory Panel” of so-called experts, with a mandate to examine how Article 9 should be reinterpreted in light of the changing security environment.

The Advisory Panel, which included very few lawyers and only one constitutional law scholar, engaged in little constitutional analysis. Rather, it developed a result-oriented argument, reasoning that because Japan needs to do more to ensure its security, Article 9 must therefore mean that Japan can do more to defend itself and others. On the basis of this Report, the Abe Cabinet developed its resolution that constitutes the “reinterpretation” of Article 9. There was no prior debate on the content of this resolution in the Diet, no vote in the Diet, no referendum, not even consultation with either the Diet or the public. As already discussed above, it was an executive fiat by the Cabinet that purported to change the meaning of a fundamental principle of the constitution, in a manner that was not only inconsistent with the long-established and entrenched interpretation of Article 9, but that was irreconcilable with the explicit language of the provision. As further evidence of the departure from democratic principles, Abe made a political appointment of the new Director of the CLB, presumably to ensure that the CLB would in due course provide a supportive interpretation of the Resolution and laws passed to implement it. This political appointment of someone external to the CLB and the Ministry of Justice was contrary to deeply entrenched convention, and provoked criticism from past CLB directors. The entire process not only usurped the superior constitutional claims of both the Supreme Court and the Diet to constitutional interpretation, but was likely designed to make any future contrary interpretation by the Supreme Court that much more difficult and politically risky.

This process of “reinterpretation” was not only a violation of the constitutional amendment procedure, but it makes a mockery of the idea that the constitution can constrain the exercise of government power. It flies in the face of the notions essential to the rule of law: that all law must be passed and amended through democratic process, and that government is both subject to the law, and must exercise its authority as defined by and in accordance with the law. Pundits argue that the Diet will still have its say when it comes time to pass legislation implementing the new interpretation. But to suggest that this post hoc debate will justify the prior unconstitutional “reinterpretation” is to reveal a perverse understanding of deliberative democracy and the respective roles of the legislature and the executive in a parliamentary system, especially one where the formalseparation of powers is so clearly defined in its constitution. And to suggest that all these ills were cured by the fact that there was robust discussion in the media is just absurd.

AM
12:00 At personal residence (no visitors)
08:00 At personal residence in Shimonoseki City, Yamaguchi Prefecture (no morning visitors)
09:02 Depart from personal residence
09:10 Arrive at former Shimonoseki City Manager’s house in Shimonoseki City, perform condolence call
09:20 Depart from former Shimonoseki City Manager’s house
09:28 Perform condolence calls at former President of Shimonoseki City Council, the late Ohama Toshiaki’s house and his supporters’ houses
11:42 Finish condolence calls
11:44 Arrive at Chofu shopping street in Shimonoseki City. Take commemorative photo with local residents
11:57 Arrive at okonomiyaki restaurant Hirata in Shimonoseki City on foot. Lunch with secretaries

HOW MUCH IS THE INTERNET WORTH TO THE U.S. ECONOMY? 9/8, Noon-1:30 pm. Sponsor: Hudson Institute. Speakers: Harold Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for the Economics of the Internet, Hudson Institute; Jeffrey Li, Research Assistant, Center for the Economics of the Internet, Hudson Institute.

US POLICY ON ASIA: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? 9/8, 5:00-6:30pm. Sponsor: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University and Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. Speakers: Dr. Kurt Campbell, Chairman and CEO of The Asia Group, Chairman of CNAS and a Director for Standard Chartered Bank.

THE TURBULENT MIDDLE EAST: A DIALOGUE WITH AMB. DENNIS ROSS AND FORMER DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR ELLIOTT ABRAMS. 9/8, 7:00-10:00pm. Speakers: Ambassador Dennis Ross is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and is the William Davidson Distinguished Fellow, Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Elliott Abrams is an Adjunct for the Program for Jewish Civilization and is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; moderator Ambassador Robert Gallucci, Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and former Dean of the SFS.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

APP's Director Mindy Kotler and Deputy Director George Lazopoulos, Ph.D. had an essay on what to expect for the Abe Administration's September 3rd cabinet reshuffle in The Diplomat on September 02, 2014.

We conclude that the cabinet members may change, but the far-right ideology will remain the same. Ideology was the criteria for selection.

On September 3, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo plans to reshuffle his cabinet, arguably the most conservative of the postwar era. Starting with the prime minister, members define a “normal” Japan as one not simply maintaining an active military, but one that rejects individual liberties, the separation of religion and the state, and Imperial Japan’s wartime culpability. All are positions at odds with the agreements that ended the war with Imperial Japan and established the U.S.-Japan alliance.

Abe’s new cabinet is unlikely to differ. A distinguishing feature in our think tank’s recent analysis of the current Abe administration is its high degree of ideological conformity, specifically focused on ultra-conservative social policies and revisionist historical notions. This is a departure from the postwar tendency to form cabinets by balancing factions (habatsu) within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The factions are both personal and policy-focused power groups.

Factional politics forced prime ministers to craft their cabinets among competing interesting and personalities. This allowed for a range of policy perspectives. In contrast, the Abe administration is characterized by common memberships in conservative nationalist, private policy organizations, or parliamentary leagues (giin renmei), which are informal issues groups for legislators. The criteria for inclusion in the Abe cabinet are neither seniority nor balance, but ideological commitment.

An overwhelming majority of the members of the Abe administration belong to one or more of 18 parliamentary leagues and issue groups that we have identified as championing conservative, sometimes extreme nationalist views. These include support for full constitutional revision, opposition to a Japanese human rights bill, rejection of equality between the sexes, opposition to Japan’s Teachers’ Union, defending Japan’s honor as a liberator of Asia, and a belief that autism is the result of lax, bad parenting. Goals include the revival of patriotic education and the return of a divine Emperor to political power.

Uniting all these groups is a goal of overturning the postwar regime and what they view as its “masochistic” view of Japan’s war history. They disavow as “victor’s justice” the verdicts of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal that found Imperial Japan’s government and military culpable for crimes against humanity. And they dismiss the 1947 Constitution as an American invention designed to control Japan and encourage un-Japanese individualism.

The hub of these leagues, with a membership that claims 63 percent of the extended 97-member Abe administration and nearly 90 percent of its 19 cabinet ministers, is the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership Diet Members’ Caucus (Shinto seiji renmei kokkai giin kondankai). The caucus is an extension of the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership, an organization established in 1970 to preserve the political presence of Shinto in Japan.

Shinto, as defined by the association, resembles State Shinto, which was the official ideology of Imperial Japan (1868-1945). Members want to restore the divine right of the Emperor and support the reinstatement of the Emperor as the executive of Japan. Japan’s current constitution rejects this view and separates the political and religious realms. Abe is the Association’s current secretary-general.

The second largest membership group, claiming 53 percent of the extended administration and nearly 80 percent of its top ministers, is the Association of Diet Members for Worshipping at Yasukuni Shrine Together (Minna de Yasukuni jinja ni sanpai suru giin no kai). Yasukuni is a government-created Shintō shrine that apotheosizes Japanese killed in the service of defending the Emperor from 1869 to 1945. Yasukuni embodies State Shinto and its totalitarian hold on wartime Japan. The Shrine, its surrounding park, and museum all celebrate Japan’s self-proclaimed liberation of Asia and reject as victor’s justice the verdicts of the war crimes trials. Recent official visits to Yasukuni by cabinet members, including Abe, provoked indignant condemnation from countries formerly occupied by Japan.

Sosei Nippon (Rebirth Japan) founded in 2007 to protect Japanese traditions and Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference) founded in 1997 to advocate patriotic values are the third and fourth most important memberships among Abe cabinet members. These organizations coordinate private sector letter-writing campaigns on such issues as comfort women and constitutional revision. Abe and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso hold senior leadership positions in both.

These organizations bring together legislators and businessmen to promote a nationalist agenda that is premised on the belief that Japan has been a victim, first of Euro-American aggression, then of false history that was invented as part of the Tokyo Trials to rob Japan of national pride and martial spirit and to force subservience to America. These groups’ believe that there has been an international conspiracy by Chinese and Koreans to invent war crimes in order to undermine Japan’s position in East Asia. If Japanese young people only understood these facts, members argue, social order would be restored and the economy would grow. Historical revisionism and a patriotic education are viewed as fundamental to national survival.

For some of the cabinet members, there are intensely personal reasons to defend the wartime era. For example, the prime minister’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, an administrator of Japanese occupied Manchukuo and the longest serving member of the Tojo wartime cabinet, was an accused war criminal. He was also a founder of one of the parliamentary leagues advocating the promulgation of a Japanese, not American written constitution. Internal Affairs Minister Yoshitaka Shindo’s grandfather died as one of the commanding officers of Japanese forces on Iwo Jima. Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and Agriculture Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi both have profited from family-run companies (Aso Group and Ube Industries respectively) that unapologetically used Korean and Allied POW slave labor.

The leagues and caucuses comprise the “big tent” for Abe’s conservative movement. These groups are no longer fringe repositories of discontent. They provide the ideological language of tradition, religion, and cultural values that underwrite the entire Abe program. They are powerful, well-funded, mainstream, and now very influential.

The United States and the 48 nations (which do not include China, Korea or India) that signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan on September 8, 1951 should be offended and alarmed by the Abe cabinet’s worldview. The Treaty is premised upon a stated acceptance of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal verdicts. It was Japan’s first step toward confirming its modern investment in the rule of law, democracy, and an alliance with the United States.

The recent revelation that Abe while prime minister twice sent hortatory messages to an annual memorial ceremony honoring Class-A and other war criminals confirms that the prime minister is more ideological than pragmatic. In the message Abe sent as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (he argues that this is private, but in a parliamentary system the head of the ruling party is the prime minister), he hailed those executed by the Allied powers as “the foundation of their nation.” And he said “(the war criminals) staked their souls to become the foundation of their nation.” The ceremony is held every April at a memorial statue that describes the war crimes tribunals conducted by the Allied powers as “retaliatory” and calls all Japanese war criminals executed as “Showa Era (1926-1989) martyrs.”

Abe’s September 3rd Cabinet reshuffle will replace many important ministers. There will not be, however, any significant ideological shifts or policy changes. The basic qualification for a cabinet position is veneration of the values and architects of Japan’s failed wartime state. This undermines the foundation of the U.S.-Japan Alliance. However, it is now the new “normal.”

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APP is a Washington research center studying the U.S. policy relationship with Northeast Asia. We provide factual context and informed insight on Asian science, finance, politics, security, history, and public policy.